Becoming a Party to the MRA

Under the Master Registration Agreement (MRA), parties wishing to operate as Suppliers or Distribution Businesses must complete the Entry Assessment (EA) process to demonstrate their ability to comply with their licence obligations. The process is designed to provide assurance to new and existing parties that entrants’ systems are fit for purpose for the live market.

An overview of the Entry Assessment process is given below. For a detailed description of the process please refer to the documents listed in the table found in the FAQs section below.

MRASCo assesses and evaluates the Market Scenario Testing activities and collates and presents a final consolidated outcome report to MEC who may approve the Applicant to enter Controlled Market Entry (CME)

Controlled Market Entry

Applicant operates in the live Market under pre-agreed registration caps

MRASCo conducts exit audit and presents a report to MEC who may approve the Applicant to operate freely in the Market

Entry Assessment Application

MRA Accession

Before an Applicant can begin the EA process it must first accede to the MRA. The MRA helpdesk manages accession applications and can be contacted here.

Please also read the
MRA Contract Manager Guidance for further information on the accession process and to understand the requirements of the Contract Manager role on behalf of a new MRA party.

EA Application

Once the party has acceded to the MRA it should contact MRASCo at the Assurance helpdesk to arrange a meeting to discuss its application, after which we will set up a joint planning meeting with Elexon to discuss the processes and agree preliminary project timelines.

Once a joint planning meeting has been held, MRASCo will conduct a Risk Assessment outlining the testing approach and finalise project timelines.

Self Assessment

Business Solution Assessment – MRASCo will review the Applicant’s business solution, compromising of business processes, local work instructions, management procedures and IT applications.

Integration Test Assessment – Applicant conducts end to end tests of their business solution to demonstrate compliance with MRA requirements.

Market Scenario Testing

MRASCo assesses and evaluates the Self Assessment activities and directs approach for the Applicant to Market Scenario Testing which consists of two stages:

Internal Market Scenario testing – the Applicant performs a number of pre-defined scenarios within their own test environment acting as all market participants;

External Market Scenario testing – the Applicant interacts in a number of scenarios with MRASCo, using the Data Transfer Network.

MRASCo Evaluates

MRASCo assesses and evaluates the Market Scenario Testing activities and collates and presents a final consolidated outcome report to MEC who may approve the Applicant to enter Controlled Market Entry;

Controlled Market Entry

During this stage, the Applicant operates in the live Market under pre-agreed registration caps. Once an agreed level of registrations has been reached, MRASCo will perform a CME exit audit to ensure the registrations have been completed as expected and that systems are working effectively in the live market.

MRASCo will then produce a report for MEC detailing the results of the audit. If approved, the Applicant can exit CME and operate freely in the market.

For details on current parties within and those that have recently exited CME please see the
CME Party Informationdocument.

FAQs

Becoming a Party to the MRA

Entry Assessment may begin once the Applicant has acceded to the MRA and BSC. After this MRASCo and Elexon will hold a Joint Planning meeting with the new entrant to discuss project timescales and provide further detail about the Market Entry processes.